BY BRIAN O’KEEFE
“Hey, it’s me. Is the bigger plane available?”, said the booming voice with that distinct yet subtle half New England…half New Orleans drawl. “I’ve got a few extra people coming back with me. Let’s send in the big plane!”, he said with his usual charm. The top two crown family jewels (two oldest) Joseph and Richie sat in awe, literally with mouths agape. Not flying commercial is awesome…and even moreso when you’re a teenager. Unreal!

The man was Emeril Lagasse, the already legendary food TV star and original King of the New Orleans food scene. “You’re coming with me, boys.” said the coolest chef ever. Mid-dinner, he had arranged for us to join him on his private jet after our live Mothers Day surprise somewhere in central Texas. Flying home to NOLA with the Big Guy.

Like my baby brother Michael, nephews Joseph and Richie have received that Uncle Brian fringe benefit: vacations and getaways – even with passports. My beloved mother taught us over and over how giving was much more special and important than receiving. Hence the bizarre astronomically high piles of Christmas presents she bought, wrapped and adorned two rooms with for all of her five children…not including the huge filled stockings!!…deep into my Twenties!

I had brought along my nephews to my personal television event of the year, something I have produced for more than ten years. For the live event, they were with us every step of the way including our “planning dinner” the night before the live surprise. We only have Emeril for those twelve hours…..dinner…sleep…live show…see you next year! But twelve hours with Emeril is like a week at a luxury resort with one of your best friends. With great food, of course.
One of the tasks of our associate producers is to find the best restaurant with a reasonable radius of our live location. The very best. Emeril really isn’t picky (except about wine) but since he crowns an unsuspecting mother in her morning bathrobe at breakfast, we want him to feel like the Epicurean King he really is the night before. Later back in reality in New Orleans, Richie ruckuses and refused to eat BBQ shrimp that Emeril had made in front of the entire restaurant. When we left everyone wondered who WE were. The boys still have photos of themselves jumping up and down on the bed in the bedroom on the chartered plane and of Emeril sleeping in the front row!

The Emeril dinners are legendary as we all —led by the King Himself—regale stories and recount memory lane of “Breakfasts” past. One year it was a five hour dinner! My “BIB” co-producer and creator Margo Baumgart should really write a book about life on the road with Emeril. There could be a chapter alone on the expense reports for the dinners.

The journey through the years is sometimes emotional as the story we would tell at 8:09 am on a very special Friday in May. I certainly don’t speak for every producer, but when its a moving story a piece of my heart gets involved. Gavin Boyle…Father Gavin (now number 2 at CBS Sunday Morning) with tears in his eyes once described me as “the eye of a storm in every story” I worked on at 48 Hours…all those moons ago.

The premise of the segment started as a contest for viewers to nominate a mother to receive Breakfast in Bed in a live television surprise including a pre-produced tribute piece thats put together under cloak and dagger a week earlier. My biggest fear every year was that someone would spill. The secret was paramount and I put on my “bad cop” persona when I dictated that warning order. “I’ll cancel it and we will pick another Mom and air it on Sunday GMA”, I said a couple times to some frightened sets of eyes. In television you make things happen. When you produce with the greats like Diane Sawyer, Charlie Gibson, Robin, Barbara George Lara etcetera… you “limit you’re risk” down to the last audio transmitter battery. Have a backup feed. Have a second plate of pancakes standing by. Lying about having a backup Mom was a little white lie. The one year I interviewed a child about her father who we picked because he “mothered” six children without his wife who died at childbirth of the last kid (we got hate mail because he was a man) was my biggest challenge. She was dangerously young…6 years old.

Like the sitcom character that I kind of am I actually uttered this: “I have Wolfgang Puck standing by in another city with a backup mother. You cant blow this.” And i said matter of factly…with brain speed of a nanosecond because i thought it as I said it….which with me could be a dangerous thing! Wolfgang was most certainly sleeping in Los Angeles but I know he would’ve helped us, if asked. All the chefs love Margo.

I keep in touch with a couple of the winners, Judy Byrwa of Dearborn, Michigan mainly. Hers was a beautiful story. She left a Beltway job in the Bush Administration (41) years ago to rush to her best friends bedside in California. When her friend saw that she was there, the nurse said “Judy is here” fulfilling a decades old promise that if anything ever happened, Judy would take her two young twin daughters Kendra and Kyra to raise. She died minutes later….succumbing to a long fight with cancer. Judy took the girls back to raise them in Dearborn putting them through high school and college, propelling them into beautiful, important women in the world. I tear up every time I think about that one. How Judy sacrificed her own career and life to fulfill a decades old promise to a dying friend.

But thats a Breakfast in Bed that almost didn’t happen. One small detail had to be fixed by yours truly. And remember, lies come easy for the child of a (possible) alcoholic and anyone born gay in the 1960’s lives a lie for at least twenty years except if you have the fortitude, pizazz and personality of my former colleague and now Bravo Genius Andy Cohen….who honestly taught me how to just be myself though I have never told him. (How long is that sentence— is it even legal -let alone grammattical?!) (i made that word up)

Judy was booked on a 9 am flight out of Detroit. That morning. Great. Terrific. With the 8:09 live hit theres no way she can leave the house. I had an idea. Lets call it a little white— solution.

“Good morning, is this Judith Byrwa?” mispronouncing on purpose to authenticate my stage managed lie- phone call. (Yes, I did this) Thank goodness Emeril wasn’t listening because difficult pronouncers aren’t his strongest apron. “Yes,” said the gentle semi shriek of a woman I had been obsessed with for weeks, in the office, shooting clandestine interviews about her, and hours in an edit room looking at photos of her. I had never heard her voice so I was shivering in the Michigan morning frost …and yes nervously shaking.

But I continued, “Your Northwest flight is delayed three hours and we wanted to let you know before you left for the airport.” “Really?” she said as I silently made a cross and whispered “Hail Mary” for such a crafty out and out lie.

The live shot went without a hitch and to this day is Margo’s favorite because the joyous scream when Judy sees the crowd of well wishers on her lawn could be heard in Times Square —without a satellite.

Something truly magical happened after the cameras left and we went back to the living room where Emeril showed her our taped tribute as millions of Americans watched with her. On the floor in front of the television was a dime. A single lone shiny, thin dime. By itself.

Just a few months earlier when my family buried my beloved mother Bernadette, at the funeral home our “Aunt Geraldine” told us that when you find a single dime ANYWHERE it will mean that Bernadette is near and with you and watching you. My sisters and I went home to pick out the lavender outfit she would be buried in…and in a pocket all by itself…was a dime. We cried and were in shock, but yet comforted. Just five months later as I interviewed the young women Judy raised for her dearly departed friend I had told the girls that story….and we wept softly.

None of us had coins on us. The women keep coins in their purses which they leave in the kitchen. We all group hugged and cried soft tears.

Its a hyper emotional assignment. And filled with a hearty soup of adrenaline, jitters, OCD tech talk, ( I almost had to be medicated for the first HD rendition) And it really really is a surprised shared with millions. Not easy to do but very easy to ruin. For years Margo and I would go into a deep Depression and even wait a few days to watch it together on tape…and re live it! (God, how we are so full of ourselves and ego!) But, we loved it so much.

I know that its Emerils favorite television thing to do, as well. He loves his fans as much as they adore him. Years later whenever he sees me, he always asks about my nephews. How beautifully fortunate that the two grandsons and the only grandchildren my mother got to know and watch grow up( and helped raise in her own home) are the two who have tagged along for the Emeril joy parade.

Producing “Breakfast in Bed” is my yearly reminder of the greatest gift in my life: that I am my mother’s son.

And no, I checked: It wasn’t Emeril’s dime.